The Russo Brothers are responsible for the second highest grossing film of all time, so in theory, that should mean they at least know how to direct an entertaining, crowd pleasing movie, especially when it’s given the budget of $300m dollars – making it one of the most expensive films ever made – to put it into perspective, you could make seven of the films nominated for best picture this year (Conclave, Wicked, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Anora, Nickel Boys & The Substance for that figure and still have money left over). Yet at the same time – who really remembers their post Marvel work? Cherry and The Gray Man are turgid straight-to-streaming disasters, so why should we have expected anything different from The Electric State, a movie made by directors who don’t like movies, actors who don’t watch movies and a streaming service that doesn’t care about movies – its reluctance to fund David Lynch’s projects yet embrace streaming slop like this is worthy of ridicule alone – it’s a film destined to be watched in bits on your commute into work or at home while you’re doing chores. Forgettable, background, anti-art tv that’s very much in the same mould as movies like Red One or Red Notice, both starring Dwayne Johnson, both gargantuan streaming movies, both forgotten a few months after their release. To expect something different from The Electric State would be to give it too much credit.
Set in a world where; in the wake of a robot-vs. humans war, robots are living in their own state separate from that of humanity and are looked down upon, hated by them. The protagonist – an orphaned teen Michelle, played by Millie Bobby Brown with all the blandness of a personality of your average “i’m not like other girls” YA novel protagonist, is joined by Chris Pratt’s Keats, a rebellious smuggler with a wisecracking robot side-kick, to find out what happened to her long-lost brother. The problem is I am never given enough of a reason to care about either Keats or Michelle with both actors playing as themselves rather than that of the character – Brown is lifeless and Pratt plays a caricature of his Jurassic Park character which in itself was a caricature of his Guardians of the Galaxy character; running through the motions with the same faux-Whedonesque dialogue that doesn’t really add any kind of depth to the table and in fact, was bad enough when Whedon did in the first place and it’s only gotten worse. There’s only so much “well that just happened” type jokes that I can take that take you out of the picture entirely, and it’s largely telling that the Russo Brothers don’t believe in their own story that they’re selling.
Entirely derirative with no original idea to its name – there is a scene where a robot plays Ride of the Valkyries on the piano during an attack on an evil entity – the film feels like the Russos have a chip on their shoulder that Avengers: Endgame wasn’t more beloved by the awards circuit and how cinema is about to be taken over by AI. It would mean more if the Russos believed in their vision or had something to say; but it’s evident that The Electric State is soulless from the get go – for an sci-fi adventure comedy there is not a single laugh, and there is never a moment of excitement to be found. Any belief that it may have been good fizzles out early on from the bland exposition-heavy monologue introduction that it begins and ends on – wasting the talented source material that it draws from. Its supporting cast is full of run-of-the-mill tune-in characters played by actors there for the paycheque – think Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Stanley Tucci – with Tucci in phone-it-in villain mode playing a businessman who’s creating virtual reality headsets that remove from the human experience, making it mandatory in all schools. There’s a touch of edginess to it that never feels authentically real.
The 90s pop culture setting and references are fine-tuned to the point of obviousness and it’s just as bad as the movies that were made in the mid-1990s. The needle drops are the most obvious needle drops that anyone with a basic 90s music history will know and it’s a waste of a stacked cast and money – during the 90s these references felt charming and refreshing but when you have a show like Stranger Things that makes 80s nostalgia feel tired it’s hard not to feel tired and bored by The Electric State – a baby between Ready Player One and E.T. but what both of those movies had to offer was that they were directed by Steven Spielberg; the man who invented the blockbuster, whereas this is made by two directors who couldn’t direct their way out of their own paper bag.
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